Safari

Yesterday Apple unveiled Safari 5, which now includes extensions.

Unfortunately, extensions are still in their nascent form and you’d have to be somewhat of a sleuth to even track down the functionality, let alone find and install extensions.

For those of you ready to test the waters of Safari extensions, here’s how:

Enable Extensions

Safari Extensions is technically a developer-only feature at the moment. So first things first, you’ve got to turn on the developer tools to enable extension functionality. Here’s a step-by-step guide to do just that:

• Open Preferences in Safari 5
• Select the “Advanced” Tab
• Scroll down and tick the “Show Develop menu in menu bar” box
• From the new “Develop” menu, select “Enable Extensions”

If you follow the above steps, the Preferences menu will include a new “Extensions” tab where you can manage Safari extensions.

Find and Install Extensions

The official Safari Extensions Gallery will open later this summer. But, there’s extensions already out in the wild; you can find some of them via the Safari Extensions Tumblr, an unofficial gallery showcasing several extensions.

To date, extensions are limited but include things like Amazon Search Bar, Reload Button, Scribefire, Gmail Checker and AdBlock.

Extension installation is fairly straightforward: Simply download and open the extension file and a prompt box will ask if you want to install the extension. Click Install to automatically update your Safari 5 browser with the extension.

[via Lifehacker]

Tags: Safari 5, safari extensions, Web Development

My favorite demo from the Safari State of the Union. Fun and clever.

Today Apple announced the release of its latest version of the Safari browser. Safari 5, says the company, will perform 30% faster than the previous version.

Apple did not announce Safari 5 at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, but only in press release. Neither the browser nor the developer package are available on the Apple site as of press time. While writing this story, the URL for the press release ceased functioning. We have a question in to Apple but have not heard a response as we post.

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Safari 5, for both Mac and PC, features a new Safari Reader for reading articles online and allows the user and the ability to choose Google, Yahoo! or Bing to power its search field.

The Safari Developer Program allows developers to customize Safari 5 with extensions based on standard tech like HTML5, CSS3 and Java. Safari Extensions are sand-boxed, signed with a digital certificate from Apple and run solely in the browser.

When Safari Reader detects an article, an icon appears in the address field. Click it and it will display the whole article on one clean page, presumably without links, sidebars or dancing banditos. Think print-ready page. There are options to enlarge, print or send via email.

5 uses the Nitro JavaScript engine. According to Apple, it does some heavy lifting.

• Runs JavaScript 30 percent faster than Safari 4, three percent faster than Chrome 5.0, and over twice as fast as Firefox 3.6
• Loads new webpages faster using Domain Name System (DNS) prefetching
• Improves the caching of previously viewed pages to return to them more quickly

Heavy on HTML5, the new browser allows full-screen playback and closed captions; geolocation, sectioning elements, draggable attribute, forms validation, Ruby, AJAX History, EventSource and WebSocket.

During his WWDC keynote today, Steve Jobs just announced that Microsoft's Bing will now be one of the search option in Safari on the iPhone. Microsoft already developed a Bing iPhone application that allows iPhone users to use the search engine's features on the iPhone without having to create a browser bookmark. Now, Bing will take its place next to Google - which will remain the default - and Yahoo Search.

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Early rumors indicated that Bing would actually replace Google as the default search engine on the iPhone, but Kara Swisher quickly crushed these rumors two weeks ago and correctly predicted that Apple would just make Bing another search option on the iPhone.

While it remains to be seen how many users will actually switch their default search engine, this could potentially be a major win for Bing. Bing's market share on the desktop continues to increase slowly but surely (though it saw some minor dips in its popularity recently), but even though Microsoft already offers a mobile version of Bing, it doesn't look like the company has made any major headway in getting market share in the mobile search market recently. Today's announcement is likely to change this, though we will have to wait and see what the actual numbers will look like once Apple releases the next version of the iPhone OS.

Image credit: gdgt

Good piece from Christopher Blizzard on why it’s a mistake for Apple to emphasize the “HTML5” brand for Safari-specific demos.